Perspectives from Pinnacle: What Will You Do When the Bridge Falls Down?

EMS systems have gotten better at incorporating historical data into their operations and planning. Odds are you deploy your workforce in response to established demand patterns and have major-incident plans that reflect known hazards like floodplains and hazmat sources.

Still, when planning for the future or even when daily events heat up, it can be challenging to process all that’s at your disposal. How can you integrate all the sources of data you have and operationalize it all to maximum benefit? That’s daunting.

“How resources are positioned, what kind of additional resources we bring into or take out of a system—those are leadership decisions that can drastically impact efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” says Chris Callsen, COO for North America for the Optima Corp., which produces optimization and simulation software for EMS and other industries. “A lot of organizations tend to let them happen in an ad hoc way.”

Optima brings a bit of science to the process. Its Optima predict applies proposed changes to actual situations in discrete event simulations. Basically it lets leaders experiment with “what if?” and see what happens differently in a response system if they alter certain variables.

Say you want to gauge the impact of adding a station. You place it on a map, and the last year’s worth of calls are replayed as if it were there. Perhaps the first call near the station would have been run by that unit, freeing up the unit that actually did run. That unit would then answer a different call. In complex EMS systems, you can imagine how rapidly that cascades.

“There are a lot of interrelationships and factors that impact one another as a system runs its activities,” notes Callsen. “Understanding how all those things interact with one another lets you plan without making a bunch of assumptions.”

Imagine having a firmer idea what might happen if you lost a key road or bridge. At Pinnacle Callsen cited the example of Christchurch, New Zealand, which in February 2011 suffered a powerful earthquake that killed 185. As their operational environment evolved, leaders tracked conditions and used modeling to answer questions like where they should put temporary facilities; such modeling is also now informing rebuilding efforts and determining how the city can be better designed—for instance, where ambulance stations should be put—for future contingencies.

To realize possibilities like these, leaders first need a picture of their systems’ data capabilities: Can they collect geospatial data about vehicles and responses? Can they collect time, location and management info on calls? Does their CAD system collect time stamps? Can all these data sources accurately depict what a system’s done historically and is doing now?

Once you have all that information, the second priority is simple: Don’t be shy about applying it through modeling, planning and in daily operations. Your citizens deserve better than guesswork.

“Technology will become increasingly important,” adds Callsen, “both for how to select which resources to send on calls and how to best deploy what resources you have to do the most good.”

For more: www.theoptimacorporation.com.

The 2014 Pinnacle EMS Leadership Forum will be held July 21–25 at the Westin Kierland Resort, Scottsdale, AZ. Get conference updates at https://pinnacle-ems.com.